These Shallow Waters
by In Flanders Fields
Summary: Austin Blofis had given up a lot when his mom had decided to send him to his dad's: A girlfriend, football stardom, many friends... Now he's having to adjust to sharing the spotlight with his weird step-brother who insist that there are "Gods". Not just his step-brother, but Percy's smoking hot girlfriend who seems to have eyes only for Percy. Talk about going from hero to zero.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimers:** Just another mortal meet. demigod story, nothing new. The recognizable characters, plot etc. are not my own, just my OC Austin Blofis.

"These Shallow Waters" come from **Alan Walker** 's song _Faded_.

 **Overview** : Percy has a new brother, well not really, he has a new _mortal_ step-brother. If that doesn't spell trouble then what does? Percabeth duh.

 **These Shallow Waters is a story about what happens when Austin Blofis makes an opinion based purely on what is seen on the surface and all the trouble and miss chances it causes him.**

* * *

 **These Shallow Waters**

 **An introduction of sorts.**

Water was a mysterious force of nature that commanded respect in all forms. Water might be calm. Calm like the water trapped in a stagnant pool or a lazy trickle like the water that flowed into a lake. Still, water that appeared calm, much like the Bolton Strid could be anything but.

Sometimes, like with rip currents, water can be a deadly force, such as in hurricane or tsunami situations where mass casualty and loss of life and havoc followed in its wake.

But however deadly water could be, there was a forgiving side to it- although these cases were not as frequent, on occasion people fought against the water's deadly nature and won.

One thing that could be agreed on was that water was not a force to be reckoned with. Water demanded the respect of all life sources and it was not something that took well to being restrained or confined.

Weather ranging or calm, water was unpredictable.

Shown with the appropriate respect, a whole nother world could be glimpsed from underneath its breaking waves.

This world held a whole host of secrets. Some secrets were just waiting to be discovered while other secrets were kept safely away in the deep, dark murky depths except for a select few who are brave enough to dive to those depths to see what kind of monsters might lurk there. In curtain depths, the light of the sun would never penetrate the waters. To the few who have seen that side of the water, it was a scary, cold and uninviting place, that held some of the most unimaginable creatures that appeared to belong nowhere else but in someone's nightmare. But thankfully, most never saw anything beyond the shallow waters. These shallow waters were safe, inviting and welcoming to all.

Raw power pulsed in all bodies of water and as it has been immortalized in a quote: The sea does not like to be restrained.

However shallow or deep, water in all its forms should not be messed with. When mortals dared to test water bad things were bound to happen.

What bad things? Well, let's just say that that is where this story begins...

* * *

New York City.

The Big Apple.

The city so nice they named it twice.

Yeah, it was nice until my mother decided to send me packing to live with my father whom I only ever saw in person over Christmas break.

That was the most recent event in the suddenly crummy life of Austin Blofis the son of Julie Sanders and Paul Blofis.

The product of two college sweethearts that were destined to be nothing more than to be friends at best, but more like strangers with memories. Their relationship hadn't even survived the full duration of their college years but they still kept in touch if for nothing else, but to talk about him, their son.

For almost seventeen years it had always just been him and his mom who was reading specialist at some elementary school in Tampa, Florida. They weren't rich, as teachers and/or reading specialist didn't make a whole lot, but they could afford to take one week-long cruise every summer. More than what some of his friends' families were capable of doing as most of them just hung out on the football field every day throwing and kicking the ball around during the summer months. So he had always considered himself lucky, even in a split family situation.

He spent all but two weeks out of the year with his mom that was how it had always been.

Visits with his dad were always reserved for Christmas time which they would spend a day doing some touristy things, like going ice skating around Rockefeller Center or taking a carriage ride around Central Park or going to Ellis Island and the rest would be spent hanging out and catching up. The two weeks were always kind of awkward but Austin blamed his parents for that as they had made that arrangement after dad had moved to NYC. He didn't know why his parents came to the agreement that his father, who was a teacher also and had the summer months off too, should only have him two weeks out of the whole year.

So when his mother had decided out of the blue that she thought that he needed to spend some time with his dad so that he could have a positive and _consistent_ male role model in his life (as her boyfriends didn't apply) he felt somewhat betrayed. She had bought Austin a one-way plane ticket to New York where she promised him that his father and stepmother would be waiting for him, without asking him if he was _really_ okay with it.

Which for the record, it wasn't okay by him. But since when did anyone listen to a teenager. Everyone thought they were either antisocial or being overly dramatic. He wasn't either of those things!

He had never even met his new stepmother since the wedding had taken place over the spring of that year so forgive him for "overreacting," his mom was practically sending him off to live with a stranger and his new wife and her son.

He had just found out that his stepmom had a son of her own around his age when his mom was trying to convince him of what a wonderful time he would have lived with his father and stepmom up in "New Yawk".

He kind of resented his dad and the mysterious boy. It felt like his father had replaced him with this other boy even though realistically Austin never had the best relationship with his father only seeing him once a year and talking to him whenever he felt like it.

Bright and early the morning of his flight his mother took him airport, hugged and kissed him goodbye (which he complained about the whole time) with the promise that he'd call her that night once he got settled and tell her all about the flight and what he thought about his stepmother and her son, his room and anything else she might want to know.

On the plane ride to the Empire City, Austin thought he'd be able to plug in his headphones and tune everyone out but he quickly found that was going to be next to impossible.

Beside him was a black haired girl wearing some weird tiara/halo/headband thing on her head and a well-worn Green Day shirt. She looked terrified at the thought of being on a plane. He had wondered if he should try to calm her down. All his friends said how smooth he was with the ladies... Maybe if he talked to her and distracted her with his good looks etc. she'd forget about being nervous. But he thought better of it. The way she tensed up and glared at him when he had sat down beside her had been enough to make him change his mind. If she wanted to act like she hated his guts, without actually speaking to him, then she could suffer through the panic attack or whatever she had going on, by herself. Call him petty, if you want, but you weren't the one that had been scorned at by a girl who appeared to only be a few years younger than himself. She could have just been daring him to say something about her anxiety, as he imagined that it must be pretty embarrassing, but still, he wasn't going to try to talk her down from it.

So he spent the whole plane ride over ignoring her, and she ignored him.

Finally, the plane landed and the girl seemed to calm down only when the plane had come to a complete stop and they were allowed to exit the plane. She had seemed impatient with him the whole time it had taken them to exit the plane and once there was enough room for them to forgo the single-file line, she walked ahead and eventually got lost in the crowd of people.

Forgetting about the weird tiara girl as he went to baggage claims and try to find the luggage that may or may not have made the trip to New York with him, he focused on trying to scour the mounds of luggage for his bags.

Finally, after what must've been _years_ he finally found his baggage and now set about the task of locating his father and his wife and possibly his step-brother too.

He wondered what his stepbrother would be like. His mother hadn't said much about only that he was around his age and she'd only told him that because he'd complained about not knowing kids his age in New York, or Manhattan or wherever he was going to live.

He just hoped the kid wasn't a total dweeb but then again he hoped the kid wasn't a jock that could potentially give him competition either. Both could ruin his rep as being the most popular boy at school and he needs to find a side chick and fast. Having broken up with his one-month-long relationship with Melissa Jacoby having decided that a long-distance wasn't worth it when there were so many other fish in the sea, he was eager to find another girlfriend.

After searching the whole airport what must have been three times over, an exhausted and hangry Austin finally caught glimpse of his salt-and-peppered haired father.

Dragging the luggage behind him he elbowed his way through the thinned-out crowd dramatically dropped his stuff by his father's feet and huffed.

"Austin?" Paul questioned before smiling and giving him the dad equivalent of a bro-hug.

"Hey, Sally! I found him," his dad all but crowed with a grin plastered on his face.

"Here Austin, let me take this. So how was the flight over?" His dad said while picking up one of his heavier bags and throwing it over his shoulder and grabbing another smaller one, leaving another three bags for me to wrestle with. Yeah, my mom had willingly paid the overage charge for luggage because she wanted me to have plenty of clothes so that I only had to worry about shopping for the winter.

"Fine," I replied sullenly.

"You don't mind carrying the rest, do you? I'd ask Percy, but he's helping Thaila carry her stuff." Paul said.

Who the heck was Thaila?  
"Paul, oh good you found him. Hello Austin dear, I'm Sally, Paul's wife, and Percy's mom."

"Hello, Mrs. Blofis." He thought it was a bit weird to call the woman Mrs. Blofis when they shared the same name and everything, but he really didn't know what else to call her.

"Call me Sally dear, all of Percy's friends do. Speaking of Percy… Percy!"  
"Right here, mom." A tall boy around my age said with a smirk on his face like he'd been standing behind Sally the whole time. Had he?

I sized him up but let out a half sigh of relief. He looked like a swimmer, maybe he was. If so we'd be cool... probably. Everyone knew that only the nobodies in sports tried out for the swim team. Who cared about becoming the next Michael Phelps when there were much cooler idols out there? Like Tom Brady and Cam Newton etc. I didn't say anything in a way of greeting making in kind of awkward between us, but finally, Percy spoke up.

"Hey, Austin right?" My step brother said awkwardly while rubbing the back of his neck. He might be acting unsure of himself but I could tell he was sizing me up but he seemed to be uninterested in what he saw. Like he saw people of my build every day and that my buff muscles and they didn't intimidate him at all. I don't know why I suddenly became so mad and why I saw Percy as a competitor but, he made me mad that he seemed so chill with me. Like he wasn't even intimidated by my muscles. It's not that I wanted Percy to be a competitor but he was what girls might call "hot". I kind of had hoped he'd be a bit of a nerd that I could boss around. I wasn't a bully or anything, but high school was all about the social rank, and it would have been nice to have someone automatically lower on the rank than myself: the new student.

Beside him stood the girl who had sat beside me on the plane…. And you guessed it, she was totally ignoring me.

"Yeah, I'm Austin. You're Percy and..." I said still looking questioningly at the girl. Was this his girlfriend or something? He had no taste in girls if it was but that meant I was good. I mean I am sure she was a kind girl and everything, even if she didn't all the way look it, but hey, who was I to judge? He wouldn't have to worry about me trying to steal her away.

"Oh, um this is Thalia G-"  
"Thalia, just Thalia." the punk girl cut him off, but I could feel the charge in the air. Almost like an electrical charge. Percy must've felt it too, like literally, because he jerked back really quickly and was rubbing his arm as if she'd just shocked him. Weird.

"Ouch, Pinecone Face, that hurt."

"Whatever, Kelp Head. You deserved it."

I looked at dad and Sally to see if they were just as confused as I was, but both of them acted like this was a regular occurrence. So I shrugged it off and ignored it too.

Picking up my luggage, I followed Dad out of the airport. Sally followed carrying some of my luggage, while Percy and Thalia trailed behind arguing about something.

"So I take it that Percy and Thalia are close?" I ask Sally.

"Yes-"  
"No! Believe me, when I say, he's _all_ Annie's."  
"You know she hates it when you call her that," Percy reminded Thalia. Who was Annie? His girlfriend? Could a dweeb like him actually land a girlfriend? I had been joking about Thalia being his girlfriend by the way haha.  
"I know, but she's not here. And you aren't going to tell her." Man, what was with this girl? If looks could kill, Percy would have been burned to a crisp. Percy flinched. She was too tough for him anyway.

"How do you know she's not here?" Percy questioned while looking around as if he was looking for Annie, or whatever she preferred to go by. Was he blind or just plain stupid? What kind of question was that? It was just Dad, Sally, Thalia somebody, Percy and me here.

The stared each other down, neither one relenting or breaking eye contact.

"Thalia's Percy's cousin, she comes around from time to time," Dad said, having overheard the conversation drawing my attention from the staring contest. He didn't seem bothered by it in the slightest.

"Oh. What about Annie, who is she?"  
Thalia answered first cutting off Percy's attempt, "Annabeth is one of my best friends and I view her as a sister. She happens to be dating Seaweed Brain here though." Percy just grinned for a moment before his smile disappeared.  
"Hey! Only Annabeth can call me that!" Percy said indignantly.

Thalia just shrugged, not acting like she cared that she had just made her cousin mad.

"Um, that's nice I guess, so… what does that make me? Your step cousin?" I interrupted. Who knew that I'd be gaining cousins too. Weird cousins, but cousins no less. Kind of neat, since I didn't have any cousins around my age- or cousins at all for that matter. I could follow them around and "hang out" with them until I made friends of my own so I wouldn't look like a total social outcast.  
Thalia's nose scrunched up probably out of disgust, "Gods, no. Nico and Percy are enough. I don't need another _male_ cousin."

"Don't you mean God? As in singular. Uno. One God?" I piped up. Yep, she was one weird girl.

Percy ignored his cousin's comment but did not ignore my question, well one of them at least.

"What she means is that Nico and I are related to her on my dad's side. Their dads are my dad's brother. And Thalia has a strict no-dating policy that she takes _very_ seriously. Trust me when I say, she treats all boys this way."

"I do not Kelp Head!"

"Do to!"  
Sensing another meaningless staring contest or argument between the two cousins, I butted in, still kind of curious about why Thalia had said Gods instead of God but figured that if they were arguing then I would _never_ get a response from them.

"So why do you-"  
"We just do okay?!" Thalia snapped at me not even allowing me to finish the sentence before glaring out of the window while pulling something out of her backpack. It was hard to get a good look at what it was without looking nosy so I stopped.

"Oh, okay, that's cool," I said throwing my hands up in what I hoped would look like an appeasing gesture. "So how come you live with your mom and not your dad?" I asked because, well that was what we teenagers asked each other and I really didn't know what else I was going to say. Plus I was kind of curious, but dad used this very moment to interrupt the flow of things by unlocking the car.

"Come on champ, help me put this luggage in the trunk so that we can get back to the apartment. I'm sure you and Thalia are tired from traveling." Dad interrupted, having lifted the back latch and was now just waiting for me to throw my bags in. I noticed Percy gave him a look of gratitude which dad acknowledged with a small smile and a squeeze on the shoulder.

I was jealous and betrayed. Dad should be reassuring me or, whatever just happened between my stepbrother and _my_ father. Yet dad and Percy acted as if they were the father and son duo, not stepfather and stepson.

Seemingly out of the blue, Percy asked dad if he could borrow the Prius. "Hey, Paul could I borrow the car this afternoon? I promised I'd take Annabeth somewhere special tonight. I'll try not let anything land on it this time," my step-brother said with a smirk.

Dad laughed and shook his head. "Of course Percy and it's okay if Blackjack decides to use the car as a landing pad, as long as you come back home safely." He joked while giving Percy a half hug like the one he gave me earlier. At least I think he was joking, he seemed kind of serious.

"Whose Blackjack?" I asked hoping to break up the thing going on between _my_ dad and my stepbrother. "And what do you mean 'as long as you come back'?"

"Um…"  
"His horse," Thalia answered while elbowing Percy in the ribs, he winced. Man, what a wimp if he could be hurt so easily as being jabbed in the ribs by a girl no less, and why hadn't Percy just said Blackjack was his horse? Was he slow as well as dumb?

"Yeah, I uh, once drove Paul's Prius to the stables and Blackjack was excited to see me, and uh yeah…"  
"The P-horse somehow made it appear as if he had actually landed on the car," Dad said while shaking his head, but he seemed to be more in awe of the fact than mad. "Dented the hood and all, I haven't had it taken out though. You know what they say, battle scars are a testament of character." Dad joked again. Actually, I felt like the whole situation was just one joke after another and I was the only one not in the loop. It was annoying.

And for the record, dad, no one said that.

Climbing in the back seat of dad's apparently dented Prius, I somehow found myself squashed in the middle between Percy and Thalia. Great.

Percy might act like a wimp, or Thalia might be tougher than she looks (she looks pretty tough to me) but sitting beside Percy, I could tell that he was ripped. Like he had a body of a swimmer, but he had muscles too. Lean muscles, but you could totally tell that he worked out outside of the pool.

Thalia too seemed to be rather muscular for a girl. Wonder if they both were into bodybuilding or something.

"So why don't you live with your dad?" I asked again because I was curious.

"Oh, ah, my dad's kind of busy you know? He works a lot and doesn't have much time for me... but we talk and all. Same with Thalia's dad and Nico's..." Percy said, but he seemed like he wanted nothing more than to change the conversation.

"So what does he do?" I asked ignoring his odd behavior it seemed I'd be doing a lot of that if I wanted to have a decent conversation with my stepbrother.

"He's a marine biologist." He said at the same time Thalia rolled her eyes, but Percy saw her.  
"What? He is totally into sea life." He defended his father's occupation to his cousin. Weird. Like either he was a marine biologist or he wasn't and just because you liked sea life didn't mean you were a marine biologist either. It took training to be one and knowledge.  
"That's like the _only_ thing he cares about, Kelp Head, same with you, which is why I call you Kelp Head and Annabeth calls you Seaweed Brain." Now it was Percy's turn to roll his eyes probably at the weird nicknames.

"Hey! I care about a lot of things other than the sea. I care about my mom, Annabeth, Paul, Blackjack, camp, the color blue, any food that is blue… see, there are a lot of things I care about besides the ocean."

Everyone ignored him.

"What's his name?" I asked, I figured, I lived in Florida and there's a lot of sea and water life associated with Florida and I had been to SeaWorld plenty of times, so I figured, there was a good chance that I had heard of Percy's father.

Percy didn't answer immediately, in fact, he probably wouldn't have answered at all had Sally not spoken up, "Don, Don Nereus."

"Never heard of him," I said, not trying to be rude or anything but you'd think I would have heard of someone who was a marine biologist. I mean, there was no shortage of them in Florida.

"He spends most of the year out at sea," Percy said kind of defensively. Okay… like where else would he be? They either spent time out at sea or worked at an aquarium or something- I didn't know I was no expert in marine biology.

I wasn't saying anything bad about him, I was just commenting on the fact that I had never heard of the guy, but I guess I'd be defensive if I thought someone was talking smack about my dad.

I turned to Thalia, I was kind of hesitant to ask her what her father did. I assumed, her father was Percy's uncle. I don't know why but I just did.

"So what does your father do? Is he a marine biologist as well?"

"Hades no!" Thalia exclaimed while thunder rolled outside. I tried to glance at the sky, but the buildings kind of blocked the view of the sky. I hadn't thought that there was a chance of a thunderstorm but I could have been wrong.

"He's into aviation."

Percy snickered at his cousin's response.

Thalia glared at him.

What was with those two and their parent's professions? They treated it like they thought their father's professions were jokes.

"If he's so into flying why were you so scared on the plane ride over?" I asked. As soon as I said it I knew it was the wrong thing to say. Percy's eyes grew wide as he frantically began shaking his head at me while Thalia shifted her glare from Percy onto me. And whoa, could she glare.

"That is none of your business mor-"  
"I don't like flying either." Percy interrupted Thalia mid comment as if he showed solidarity over them both hating to fly, then the situation would be better. Thalia didn't finish the sentence but continued to glare at me like she was trying to figure out how the best way to dispose of my body when she killed me.

I shivered.

Percy continued as if he hadn't realized he'd interrupted his cousin causing me to break switch my attention to him. "I have only ever flown once, well if you don't count all the times on Blackjack, but you know, me and flying, it's uh, nerve-racking."  
Odd way of putting it that you were just afraid of heights, but whatever. And I guess he jumped Blackjack. Cause, I know horses had airtime or suspension whatever they called it when the horse was in mid-jump over hurdles but I sure wouldn't call that _flying_. (A/N: _In Flanders Field_ rides English so the author knows the terminology is a bit wrong here, but whatever.)

After arriving at the car park, and pulling into what had to be dad's assigned parking space, we filed out of the Prius and grabbed the luggage before riding up the elevator and making our way to my new residence.

I hoped that I liked it here if I didn't then it was already too late. There was no turning back now so I did the only thing I could do. I took a deep breath and followed the small crowd into the apartment that I would be calling home.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimers:** Just another mortal meet demigod story, nothing new. The recognizable characters, plot, etc. are not my own, just my OC Austin Blofis.

"These Shallow Waters" come from **Alan Walker** 's song _Faded_.

I don't own _Hamilton: An American Musical_ either, the genius, Lin-Manuel Miranda does.

 **Overview** : Percy has a new brother, well not really, he has a new _mortal_ step-brother. If that doesn't spell trouble then what does? Percabeth duh.

An overabundance of the word "Like."

Undecided at the moment if I am going to continue this story.

* * *

My step-brother and _his_ family/friends were officially the weirdest group of people I have ever met- and I have met some strange ones, I did attend public school after all.

I couldn't put my finger on it exactly that made them stand apart from everyone else I knew, but they were all the _same_. I mean whatever it was that was different about them, wasn't just a hit or miss in the crowd, but rather, they _all_ had the same oddity about them. Leaving me to the conclusion that it must have run in Percy's father's family. Thank _God_ it did not run in my genes.

I had just spent the evening watching them, not really getting involved in their conversation because I didn't want any of their weirdness rubbing off on me, in case, you know, it was contagious or something, but I still was no closer at figuring them out. That frustrated me to no end. Like, I was going to be going to school with them (but hopefully not _all_ of them) I needed to know what I was up against, and that meant I needed to be able to read them. But they were pretty much unreadable. Like I couldn't get a read on any of them.

One thing I _had_ picked up on was that Percy seemed to be the leader of the band of misfits, and a girl who had blonde princess curls seemed to be the co-leader.

Just because, and I am ashamed to admit it, it was just _so_ obvious that Percy was the captain of this group.

Can you believe it? Like he might be a wimp, but the rest of the misfits _looked up_ to him and treated him like a leader… a war _hero_. I can't describe it, you'd have to be there to fully understand, but it was obvious that they looked up to him and actually stopped to listen to him talk.

And that they loved to say the word "Gods" instead of "God" and they enjoyed talking about ancient Greek as if it wasn't all that ancient.

Whatever. They were probably all part of some Greek club or something assuming Goode had such a thing. Back at my old school we never had such a club the closest thing we had was a geek club (not that that was the _actual_ name of the club or anything) but the only one that seemed to have half enough brains to be considered a nerd was a blonde chick. However, when I asked Percy if they were apart of some Geek, I mean Greek club, he looked at me like I was stupid, I'm not stupid. I was just trying to strike up a conversation and when I do make an attempt they look at me like I'm stupid and the girl looked annoyed at me. They all did. Like I was the inferior being here. I beg to differ.

Just because I didn't understand Greek, much less speak it or appear to be a know-it-all in Greek Mythology, which they all seemed to, it did not mean I was stupid or inferior.

Percy's 'girlfriend' seemed smart, not that brains were exactly high up on my list of priorities in a girlfriend, it wasn't that I had anything against a smart girl, but they just didn't seem to appreciate the whole "ball is life" thing. They were too involved in books and trying to out-nerd the other nerds. Percy didn't seem to be the type to care too much about the books either so how he ended up with such a brainiac, much less a hot one, was a surprise to me but anyone could tell he was totally whipped.

To prove my point, Annie, or whatever her name was, had just spent the last five minutes lecturing about prepositional phrases and Percy actually sat there and listened to her along with dad. Course, dad would, though, being an English teacher and all. He practically lived and breathed this kind of stuff. So while dad was nodding along like he was actually following along, Sally just had a grin on her face winking at some of Percy's friends when Percy wasn't looking, because he was staring at Anna.

I tuned them out. This wasn't an English class, so why was she subjecting us to this torture? Who cared about prepositional phrases anyway, well besides dad (which should be a given) and my step-brother who probably didn't even know what a prepositional phrase was even if it was in writing in front of him. He didn't seem to have enough brains about him to even know what a prepositional phrase was, much less what it modified, or whatever they did. As I said, I wasn't paying her any attention to the lecture and scrolling around on my phone.

"Percy, you aren't even listening to me are you?" I jumped, hopefully, that went unnoticed- when the girl suddenly stopped talking about English and began scolding Percy. I _almost_ felt bad for him. Simply because I could relate seeing as how I had dated Trish, or Tasha or whatever her name was (I'm like really bad at names if you couldn't tell) and she had won a prize of some sort in poetry or something and was constantly talking about English and poetry and the latest novel she'd been working on. Not to offend any of the English geeks out there, but seriously, _who cares_?

"Um, yeah?" Dork said.

"Then what was I saying?" The blonde challenged pulling away from Percy to look at him. Some of the other teenagers in the room snickered at Percy's unfortunate position. I, I will unashamedly admit, probably laughed the hardest.

"That you love me." My step-brother said confidently without missing a beat before leaning in and giving the girl a kiss. Like not a kiss on the cheek, but like on the lips and everything and it was right in front of his mom and my dad.

I looked at Sally thinking that she'd be fussing at the PDA between her son and this girl but she was cooing. You'd think she would be worried about becoming a grandmother by the time she turned forty, but apparently, she wasn't.

I then looked at dad thinking that since Sally wasn't going to say anything, he would, but my dad had a sappy grin on his face. Like _he_ thought they were the cutest couple imaginable. I wonder what he would do if he saw them kissing in the hallways of Goode High. Would he say anything or just grin that happy little smile of his.

Someone, I think was Percy's cousin Tia or Tayah or something like that was thinking along the same lines as I was and started to gag but she was quickly hushed by another nameless teen.

I noticed that some of the teens looked away, not out of discomfort or embarrassment, but as a way to give the two utterly besotted love birds some privacy, while others grinned secretively at each other.

Eventually, they broke apart but they continued to look deeply into each other's eyes. Now it was my turn to start gagging. God, this was sicking…

"So, you're Percy's step-brother." A blonde superhero looking dude who had been sizing me up asked, well not really asked, more like stating a fact, but I found myself nodding my head anyway. I mean it _was_ a fact. I was Percy's, step-brother. Just his step-brother.

I guess I was just desperate to have someone to talk to. Kind of lonely to be in a room full of people yet have no one to talk to.

"Uh yeah."

"Figures you'd be his step-brother and not his half-brother. Not even Prissy's such a wimp."  
Before I could argue with the piggy looking girl (I say that but it was really an insult to pigs everywhere) that I was 1) not a wimp and 2) that I was pretty sure Percy was more of a wimp than I, Percy spoke up.  
"Thanks, I guess Clarisse… Anyway, yeah, he's Paul's son and uh, yeah. He's been living with his mom in Florida, until today…"  
"So he's not… a you-know?"  
"No, at least I'm pretty sure. Why?"  
"Well, considering how well Paul took it, I wondered if he'd had some…"  
The other teenagers' eyes flashed over to my dad, who was taking everything in stride despite the carefully worded sentences that seemed to make sense to everyone but me.

"Nope. Percy was my first. Never imagined such a thing was possible." Dad said with a shake of his head, glancing at Percy and then Sally with something akin to admiration and disbelief. "Though I have to say-"  
"Thanks, Paul. I guess he had no choice but to... you know... I mean, Rachel had to explain the dents in the car somehow.." Percy cut dad off with a shrug. I was completely lost in the direction in which the conversation had taken.

I mean how was _me_ being Prissy's, I mean, Percy's step-brother, have _anything_ remotely to do with the dents in dad's car? I mean _I_ didn't put them in the car and we didn't even know each other existed at the time Percy, or his horse, probably put the dents in the car so it wasn't like he could blame me for it.

I was seriously confused with the direction this conversation had taken and had eventually given up trying to follow it. "Who's Rachel?" I asked, glumly, because great, there were even more of them.

Just how popular was Percy anyway? _He_ certainly didn't seem to have any shortage of friends, whereas I had no one. I was the transplant. The one who had had to leave everything behind and start over. I bet Percy had never known what it felt like to be the oddball out. It just wasn't _fair_. Nothing about this was fair. I should be down at the field mucking about, practicing so that I could go to college on a full athletic scholarship.

"A friend." Percy's girlfriend said simply. There was something about Annabeth's refusal to say more about Rachel made me curious. I wondered if there was bad blood between the two. Maybe Rachel had been Percy's girlfriend at the time. Or, or Percy had been cheating on Anne and she had found out, or perhaps it had been the other way around.

I mean Annabeth might be the biggest nerd, she was smokin'. I actually wondered what she saw in the dimwit called Percy. It probably wasn't nice of me to call my step-brother a dimwit, but sometimes the truth hurts and he didn't look to be the brightest crayon in the box. He was about as dense as they come. He probably would be the cheating type. (I really shouldn't talk as I myself could be considered a "playa" but even I knew the importance of keeping a good looking girl around.)

"Don't even think about it." The blonde said calmly at me. "Percy would never cheat on me for Rachel or anyone else. Right, seaweed brain?"

"Uh, what? Oh, no, I'm totally Annabeth's. Rachel's not allowed to date. And besides, she would probably beat me up _for_ Annabeth if I attempted to ask her out."  
Cue more snickers from the rest of the crowd.

"And I would help her, and don't you forget it Kelp Head," his cousin said.

Geez, the blood between them must be as thick as water.

"Thanks, Thalia," Annabell said while wrapping her arm around Percy. While Sally and dad grinned on from where they sat on the love seat.

Percy shook his head and dramatically said. "I sometimes wonder if mom and Paul love you more than they love me."

"Oh Perce," Sally said while winking at the group of kids scattered around the room, causing a few of them to laugh, "Annabeth is like family, she's around so often."


End file.
